Totally True 3, Unit 16 “Animal Artists”

These are an introductory and an extension activity for TT 3 unit 16.  You should copy the PDFs to your Z drive or to a USB flash memory. 

Introductory activity: 

1. Tell the students to keep their books closed.  Put the painting slide on the “Unit 16 animal artist” PDF on the screen.  In groups, ask students to look at the painting and speculate on the character of the artist.  They can use their dictionaries and should write three adjectives.

2.  Elicit some of their answers, then show the picture of Congo, the chimpanzee artist on the next page.

3.  Teach the lesson in the way you prefer.

4.  Put the “Three artists quiz” on the screen.  Read the descriptions of the three different artists.  They are:

¨     Jackson Pollack, an American artist whose paintings have sold for up to US $140,000,000.

¨     Ian Ford, an American pre-school child.

¨     Kamala, an elephant who lives in Calgary Zoo.  Kamala’s paintings have sold for up to $2000. 

5.  Tell the students that each artist created two of the paintings.  Students talk to partners* and guess who created each painting. 

6.  After the students write their guesses, show them the second slide, on the third page of the PDF, which shows the answers 

Unit-16-Animal Artist

Unit 16 Painter-Quiz

Totally True 1, Unit 16: “Man Leaves Wife in the Atlantic” 

Here are two exercises that worked well with this unit.  The first is a worksheet to 

pre-teach some of the vocabulary and the second is a pantomime activity to 

reinforce the vocabulary and the details of the story. 

1.  Before starting the unit, give each student a copy of the worksheet.  They can 

do it individually, or in pairs.  They may need dictionaries to check the spelling of 

the words.  Check the answers together. 

2.  Teach the unit in the way you prefer. 

3.  After the story has been read and understood, make groups of four and give 

each a set of cut-up pantomime cards.  They should be shuffled and put face 

down in a stack on the table.  They should have their textbooks open to the unit 

16 story (p. 70) at this point.  The teacher demonstrates by picking up a card and 

pantomiming the sentence.  I usually do “They were in a race with 35 other 

rowboats.”  The students look at the story and guess which sentence I’m 

pantomiming. 

4.  In their groups, the students take turns picking up a paper and pantomiming 

the action.  Others look at their story and say the sentence they think is being 

pantomimed.  The correct guesser receives the card.  At the end, the one with 

the most cards, the “best guesser”, is the winner. 

5.  Do a second round, but this time have the students all close their books. 

Have fun!

TT1-u16-instructions

TT1-u16-pantomime-cards

TT1-l16-vocab-pre-teach

Smart.fm is a very useful free site for pre-teaching or for reviewing vocabulary. Users can create lists for online flashcard-type drills, short matching quizzes, productive quizzes, and dictation. There is a wealth of material already there for students to access. Most of my students have quickly found either TOEIC and TOEFL prep or more casual and idiomatic vocabulary such as slang or song lyrics.

The system works by spaced repetition and some of the content is rich enough to maintain interest over time. There is also a social aspect that allows users to follow and encourage each other.

I recently created a list of 40 key vocabulary words from units 9-12 of Let’s Talk 1 for my Level 2 Eigo IIA class, but the system is open and anyone can use the list. Please take a look and consider giving it a try with a class if you have time in the computer room. Each target word has one or more example sentences with high quality audio for some basic, brief listening input and dictation practice.

Eigo IIA: U-80: Step 1: Units 9-12

Site navigation is in Japanese or English and login is quite simple. If students already have a Mixi, Yahoo, or Google account, they can simply login in with that username and password.

I’ve used these two PowerPoint slideshows in my Communicative Writing extension class. They seemed to work quite well to outline some approaches to opinion essays.

If you fancy trying them out, I’d be interested to hear what you think. They may give extra ideas/activities for the 2nd writing task in the Level3 Writing Course.

There are no ‘how to notes’ with the slideshows, but I think they are quite easy to follow - I allowed a lot of discussion and pair-work for students to talk about the points raised as the slideshows played.

Damon

Slideshow 1 - 4 paragraph: basic opinion essay (Money for space exploration: good or bad?) zip file
Slideshow 2 - 4/5 paragraph: more detailed opinion essay (Do we need to learn a language?) zip file

Enclosed the attached .zip archive are two slideshows and instructor notes for instructional materials to teach Future Conditionals and Hypothetical Conditionals (Present). These structures should be useful for students when writing the problem/solution essay.

The instructor notes are in PDF format but the slideshows are in editable .ppt and .key formats as well as PDF. The Keynotes presentations are more attractive, but Mac only.

Identical files are also on Shared Files and hard copies in the appropriate binder on the B course shelf.

Task 3 Grammar support hypotheticals and conditionals

You can download a folder of the supplementary materials for the first writing task in Level 3 below. There are two zip files: one contains PDF files, the other contains Word (.doc) files. The Word files can be edited, but may have format problems as the original files format was pages (Macintosh).

Level 3: Task 1 Materials zip (pdfs)

Level 3: Task 1 Materials zip (docs)

On November 6, 2008, Tim Marchand gave a teacher development presentation and workshop on ways to use the recording technology in the tutorial rooms (G411-G420), including video clips and activities from FE speaking and listening, reading, and writing classes, troubleshooting tips, and pros and cons of various media for saving student video clips. Tim’s handouts and PowerPoint slides from the session can be downloaded below. During the workshop, participants referred to Forrest Nelson’s student handout with instructions on how to record in the tutorial rooms. This handout can be found in the “How To Documents” Folder in Shared Files.

Presentation handouts

PowerPoint slides

An activity for Unit 8

Activity Time
35 ~ 50 minutes depending on how much reinforcement / explicit teaching / grammatical accuracy
you fancy.

Activity Goals
Encourage understanding of descriptions and comparisons.
Allow practice with comparatives and superlatives.
Motivate basic inferencing skills.
Passive review of the past tense.
Active review of adjectives.

comparatives.superlatives.practice

This is a commercial that I found on the net. I have used and still use it in my reading classes. I have prepared a number of comprehension questions that I give the students or ask the students to find the answers for. There are some other extension questions too.The commercial is about “Grandpa Chew”watch?v=9ll-bDmK3EAThe questions are at this link reading-comprehension-questions-for-grandpa-chew-life-insurance-commercial

This is an activity to practice the “skimming” technique to get the main idea using the Unit 8 reading “It’s not so bad to be middle-aged.” You might want to try it after doing the intro pair activity.

passages-unit8-skimmimg-for-students.doc

passages-unit8-skimming-for-teachers

Here are a couple of late-breakers that didn’t make it into the binder at the start of the semester. You might want to use them to help your students prepare for Speaking Task 1 (summer vacation interview).

Activity to promote accuracy in questions (PDF): Past tense question writing worksheet

If you decide to follow the same interview pattern as on the DVD, this document may help you guide your students through the various stages of the interview. Either hand it out, or write on the board doing the final practice session.

Interview pattern (PDF): Interview Pattern

These documents can also be found in Shared Files, and in the level binder.

This is a simple activity that needs a bit of preparation before the class, but is usually enjoyed by the students. It’s a simple game where the students have to correctly identify the object that has been taped to their foreheads by asking a series of questions.

Put the students into small groups of four or five, and place the object cards face down in front of them with the sticky tape or blue-tac already attached to the back of the cards. When you say go, the students should place the cards on their foreheads at once, and janken to decide who goes first. Each student then takes it in turn to find out what they are “advertising” by asking Yes/No questions. If the answer to the question is “Yes” they may ask another question, if it’s “No” then the turn moves to the next player. Obviously the player who guesses first is the winner, but you may want to keep the game going until everyone has discovered their product. For the faster students, have them try to guess the exact product (brand etc), for the slower ones a generic object would probably suffice as an answer.

The time-consuming bit is in the preparation - it’s best to cut up the pictures - which you can download here (cards) - and put them onto some kind of card so the students can’t see through the paper. Two sets per class should be enough

A simple questionnaire that can be used during the semester to get the students to reflect on their own behaviour in class, and to anticipate their own participation grade.

student-participation-questionnaire1

Many teachers are planning encourage their students to read graded readers this semester. This worksheet may come in handy to help students prepare for a short oral book report.

Download the PDF: l1-book-report

Moodle Forums are very useful, and sometimes getting email by subscription is a great way to maintain communication. I frequently use the News Forum on each course to send students updates or announcements. I tend to send them homework assignments, but the students are really waiting to get cancellations and other important notices through Obirin Mail. Many users have email forwarded to their cellphones hoping they can sleep in or get an extra week to study for a quiz if the teacher is out.

Unfortunately, Moodle has spammed some users by repeatedly subscribing them to Forums without users realizing it. Here is one way to stop email from all regular Forums, but still allowing email from the important News Forum.

Download the one minute video Stopping Email From Moodle Part 1. The steps in this video are the same for students and for teachers. Please use the video in class, or embed it in your own Moodle course to help students learn how to stop unwanted email.

As teachers, follow the steps in this second video to prevent any user from subscribing to a specific Forum. It is very important to do this when you create the Forum. Download Stopping Email From Moodle Part-2.

A Quicktime movie with worksheet and activity explanation.

The movie talks about my Summer Vacation and has about 10 photos with a narrative. There is a worksheet for listening comprehension and a script for the teacher to expand upon. Please feel free to use the movie and alter or adapt the activity. There may be hitches with the Quicktime movie file depending on the platform you use. Please check it before you use it in class. If the sound file and slides do not synch. turn the volume off and read the narrative provided instead (you can use the arrow keys to click through the pictures on the Quicktime file).

The whole activity should take between 30~70 minutes depending on how you decide to expand it.

Summer vacation / Past tense activity

This next video introduces a content management function: Hiding content from students, and then unhiding it. This is quite useful when developing a one year course. You can keep everything in one place, sharing content like glossaries or media, but showing only the current topics to students. Hiding sections is also a great way to keep works in progress hidden until they are ready to go.

Download the Quicktime video Moodle Tip 003–Hide and seek. Running time: Two minutes.

This video introduces one function in the Moodle Course settings–Changing the name of your course.

Download the Quicktime video of Moodle Tip 002–Change the name of your course. Playing time less than one minute.

The Obirin eLearning site has a lot of documentation on the front page. So much in fact that it tends to push the courses off the bottom of the screen. Watch this short video to see how to eliminate the clutter. Or, take a chance and just try it yourself. Next time you login to Moodle, add the word “my” to the end of the URL.

Download the Quicktime video of Moodle Tip 001–My Moodle. Playing time less than one minute.

This is a sheet with Classroom English that I often use in class. Attached with this is a set of audio files that students can download and listen to if they want to practice them.
Classroom English audio files:classroom-english
Classroom English handout: Classroom English Handout